MARKING THE 70TH ANNIVERSARY OF THE ATOMIC BOMBINGS OF HIROSHIMA AND NAGASAKI (Scholarships available)

Join us for this national gathering marking the 70th anniversary of the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki and offer Campaign of Non-Violence promoters and others with significant opportunities to deepen the vision and practice of nonviolent change.

Social Action & Science

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UPAYA NEWS AND RETREATS

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EDITOR'S NOTE

We welcome you to Upaya eNews for December 12. Much recent news has been about the United Nations Climate Conference 2011 in Durban, South Africa, which ended December 9. This newsletter focuses on Buddhism and climate change, and also includes an extraordinary speech by Anjali Appadurai, which she made as a Youth Delegate near the end of the conference. We begin this newsletter with a poem, Occupy the Heart, by Roshi Pat Enkyo O'Hara and a video of Anjali's speech.

The articles include:

A Buddhist View on Climate Change by Nigel Crawhall

Occupy the Climate Emergency: Buddhist Reflections on Inter-generational Justice by John Stanley, David Loy

A Great Aridness: Climate Change and the Future of the American Southwest by Bill deBuys

Ecology, Ethics, Interdependence: Mind and Life with the Dalai Lama and Karmapa

Thich Nhat Hanh and David Suzuki in Conversation about the Health of the Planet

For news about Roshi's current travels and teachings as well as her Upaya schedule for 2012, see "Roshi's News." Also join Sensei Beate Genko Stolte for one of the Winter Practice Period retreats listed below.

May we carry dedication to practice and service, generosity and gratitude, love and compassion, strength and clarity throughout this winter season.

December 21: Join Us for Sangha Potluck Celebrating Solstice

Join the Upaya Local Sangha and Residents for a Holiday potluck at the Upaya River House on December 21 after the Wednesday evening Dharma talk. The Upaya Kitchen will make a soup, the rest is up to us.

We'll have music (bring your guitar, Martha and others!) and singing, along with fine food and fellowship. This will be an opportunity to put suggestions for 2012 local sangha events in the pot, get your name on the list, and get to know each other more fully.

What to Bring: Last names starting A-H, bring a main-dish or vegetable, I-M salad or bread, N-Z dessert.

This gathering will replace the usual last Sunday of the Month Dharma Discussion Group.

December 31: Join Us for New Year's Eve, 10-12 pm

New Year's Eve Sit, December 31, 10-12 pm with Roshi Joan and sangha.

Sitting in intervals of 25 minutes then 10 minutes of walking meditation. Followed at midnight by 108 bells on the densho, a brief informal talk by Roshi Joan, and chanting the four vows. Afterward, please join us for tea and cookies in the River House.

All are welcome; please RSVP if you plan to attend — to Beverly Croydon, upaya@upaya.org, or 986-8518, X 11.

Roshi Joan's News, Upcoming Teachings and Travels with Links

Roshi was grateful to sit with seventy students, friends and colleagues for this year's Rohatsu sesshin, marking the enlightenment of the Buddha. A joy to teach with Enkyo Roshi and Senseis Kaz and Beate. Next year's Rohatsu filling; please register early! Dec 1 — 8, 2012: ROHATSU: Buddhas and Bodhisattvas. Click here.

On Saturday, Roshi officiated at the monthly fullmoon Fusatsu ceremony, a beautiful ceremony that gives us the opportunity to renew our vows and to call forth our dedication to end suffering. This ceremony happens every fullmoon evening at 5:30pm. You are always welcome to join us.

Later Saturday evening, she spent time in the home of Michael and Tess Honack and visited with Luigi Fieni, the extraordinary restorer of major Italian frescoes, as well as the precious Buddhist frescoes of Mustang: http://www.luigifieni.com/ Roshi will be returning to Mustang with the Nomads Clinic in 2013 and looks forward to seeing Luigi again.

Roshi left for southern California this Sunday. On Monday, she goes into a private meeting put together by Soren Gordhamer, where she, Jack Kornfield, Dan Siegal, and a small group of key people in the Silicon Valley and business world will explore: "How do we best support the development of inner technologies such as wisdom, compassion, and awareness in a culture where the external technologies are advancing so fast?" Roshi will be a featured speaker at the Wisdom 2.0 conference in Silicon Valley in February: http://www.wisdom2summit.com/

On Tuesday, she travels to San Francisco, meets with Paul Ekman, who wants to explore her heuristic model on compassion. This work will be published at the end of January in Current Opinions in Supportive and Palliative Care. This exchange will be filmed by IT entrepreneur and Buddhist teacher, Ravi Verma. Roshi returns December 16 and will be at Upaya 'til January 16. She looks forward to time with the local sangha.

A Special Message from Roshi Joan

In Buddhism, Dana Paramita, the perfection of generosity, is the first realization of the Bodhisattvas. It is truly a way for us to let go and benefit others. Generosity is a way we cultivate joy, end the sense of separateness between self and other, and actualize the third of the Three Pure Precepts, doing good for others. This is the heart of Buddhist practice, Christian practice, Muslim practice, the heart of what it means to become fully human, the heart of surrender and love.

Every year, we ask for your help for us to continue. Upaya has two streams that support us: You and our programs. Each year, we give away many scholarships, post hundreds of free podcasts, develop and distribute this weekly newsletter, deliver food to the homeless shelter, teach in the prisons, sit with the ill and dying, train health care professionals and chaplains, and keep our temple doors open throughout the year with meditation, teachings, seminars, all open to you and to anyone who crosses our threshold.

We know it has been a tough year for all of us financially, and asking you to reach into your heart and pocket is a big request. But as many of you are directly and indirectly part of our life, we humbly ask you to do an end-of-year, tax-deductible gift. We truly need this as we head into our year's conclusion, and as we have carried so much this year.

...and discover how gratitude and generosity are the same stream of being.

palms together,

Roshi Joan Halifax

FEATURE ARTICLES

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Occupy Your Heart: Poem by Roshi Pat Enkyo O'Hara

Occupy is to be present To your heart beat To the sounds of your breathTo the crying, the laughing.To the world within and without Alive, Free, and unsticking Unstuck, filled with surprise, With the amazement of Your own heart.

Get It Done: Anjali Appadurai

Anjali Appadurai, a student at the College of the Atlantic in Maine, addressed the UN Climate Conference on behalf of youth:

A Buddhist View on Climate Change: Nigel Crawhall

Climate change is a crisis which fits closely with the Buddhist understanding of the world, and hence the appropriate understanding and response is considered to be clearly spelt out in the Buddha’s original sermons and teachings: the Four Noble Truths and the Eightfold Noble Path. The more complex aspect of the climate crisis is not its causality or human psychology, but the structural issue of the globalised economy and the unwholesome links between multinational fossil fuel corporations, political leadership and the failure of the United Nations’ multilateral system to respond appropriately. Buddhists still need to study this globalised political-economy and decide how we will challenge this power nexus to bring about liberation from the great suffering of climate instability and degradation of the environment and ecosystems.

Dhamma and Climate Change

Climate change is the result of human intentions and actions. Fundamentally, it is the desire for material possessions and the driving force of greed without wisdom or compassion that has created both a personal and a structural momentum that threatens the well being of the planet, the sentient beings of the planet, including the cause of suffering for humans, notably the poorest and most vulnerable.

Climate change is to be understood from 3 key foundations in Buddhism:

The Four Noble Truths and the 8 Fold Path

The Precepts and the Three Poisons / Unwholesome Roots

Dependent Origination

Climate change is a cause of mass suffering. The First Noble truth is the reality of suffering (dukkha), taught by the Lord Buddha in his first sermon. The second and third Noble Truths elaborate the human relationship with suffering. Suffering is understood to have a cause, which is rooted in human desire and grasping (tanha). The human attachment to the Earthly realm (samsara – perpetual wandering and rebirth) as experienced through our sensations drives our desire for wealth, power, material objects and sensory satisfaction which is the cause of suffering.

Climate change is closely related to individual desires for wealth, comfort and control over resources which grow into greed, a lack of compassion for the suffering of others, and a moral turpitude which eventually leads to wars, killing and in this case, a global environmental and climatic tipping point. This greed and grasping has evolved systemically into a highly skewed international political-economy, where energy resources have become intimately tied to structural inequalities, competition for resources and exclusive control by certain national groups and elites over oil reserves and the production of wealth and power through the political economy of non-renewable energy. Poverty and the causes of climate instability need to be seen as two kinds of the same coin.

Four Noble Truths

The appropriate Buddhist response to the recognition of suffering and its cause is that there is a path to liberation from this suffering; this is the Eight Fold Noble Path, the fourth of the Noble Truths of the first sermon. The Eightfold Path (Arya astangika magga) is the systematic practice of skilful living, the growth of concentration, wisdom and ethical living (sila).

The Eightfold Noble path is an appropriate response to climate change. Through the development of mindfulness (sati), compassion (karuna), loving kindness (metta), and meditative concentration to penetrate the true nature of suffering and liberation (samadhi and sati sampajañña), the individual is able to see the harm that he or she is perpetrating and engage in corrective actions to lessen the suffering of the individual and other sentient beings.

The challenge noted by INEB is that the suffering of climate change may arise in the minds of individuals (the source of all evil and negative karma: delusion, anger and hatred), but it is also wired into the international economy which has in turn corroded the moral stature of political systems. With only a few exceptions, many political leaders, ruling parties, and status apparatus in both the North and the South involve close cooperation with extractive industries, the fossil fuel complex and the influence of fossil fuel multinationals. Either these multinationals are paying for the extraction of fossil fuel resources, or they are involved in importation and commodification, or in turn they are involved in security and military arrangements to protect their interests and profits.

Three Unwholesome Roots

The driving force of climate change is to be understood as closely associated with the three poisons (also three unwholesome roots) that are primary drivers in human negative karmic action and the tragic results of such intentions and actions. These three poisons are greed (lobha), anger / hatred (dosa), and delusion (moha) can be seen to underpin the climate crisis, and also guide us in the types of mental states which must be uprooted and counter-acted to lead to a more just, equitable, sustainable and caring society. Of the three, greed is the obvious driver, but is also closely associated with ignorance / delusion. It is wilful ignorance, in the face of science and logic, which continues to propel the crisis and is expressed in the deadlock at the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change. The selfish characteristics of our conduct also provide camouflage for a global form of hatred where those with power and wealth and unmoved by the terrible suffering of other species and the poor, notably in the Pacific, Africa and Asia – those who experience the brunt of the suffering meted out by climate instability.

This structural problem is specific to our current era. At no other time in history has the entire planet’s economic system been tied to corporate power, much of which is unaccountable to citizenry, and has deliberately promoted unwholesome moral conduct by elites, governments, leaders and political parties. Appropriate Buddhist action requires an analysis of the structural influence which must be directly addressed if the climate crisis is to be deconstructed and a sustainable, non-harmful energy and economic system is to be constructed.

Dependent Origination

Both the moral dilemmas presented by climate change, and the complex response by Buddhist to the global energy-economic-political concentration of power in fossil fuel multinationals requires appropriate reflection on dependent origination (paticca samuppada). The crisis is not natural, it is manmade, and hence it is worthy of reflection and investigation as part of the Dhamma. Further effort needs to be made by Buddhists to understand how the current global energy-political-economy has emerged, and how it must be deconstructed in such a manner by Buddhists and other social movements so that a sustainable path can be established that learns the lessons of the current conditions.

This commitment to transformation is anchored in the Buddhist faith. All Buddhist are required to take refuge in the Triple Gem (the Buddha, the Dhamma and the Sangha), which is then complemented by the taking of precepts. Most Buddhists regularly take the 5 core precepts, which include the commitment not to kill, and the second precept not to take what does not belong to them. Climate change is driven by breaking of these first two precepts. The current energy usage is causing the death of species, including the imminent risk of mass extinction, as well as causing death through war, famine and natural disasters. INEB members and monastics agree that the second precept is also being violated. The current generation is stealing resources (atmospheric resources) from future generations, in a lust driven desire for current comfort at the expense of the well being of future generations.

In the climate analysis, all Buddhists are obliged to concentrate their understanding of the current crisis, in combination with compassion for all sentient beings, and to respond with right view, right action and right effort (samma ditthi and samma kammanta, samma vayama) Mahayana Buddhists also take the Boddhisatva vows, which oblige them to work for the liberation of all sentient beings.

His Holiness the 14th Dalai Lama, His Holiness the 17th Gyalwang Karmapa, the Buddhist Patriarch of Cambodia amongst others have identified climate change and its threats of the 6th mass extinction to be a high priority for all Buddhists to understand and act on skilfully and urgently.

Prepared by Nigel Crawhall, Hout Bay Theravada Buddhist Centre, Western Cape Religious Leaders Forum: This theological reflection is based on the INEB discussions and contributions from different denominations and lineages.

In 2009 and 2011, the International Network of Engaged Buddhists (INEB) held two workshops on Buddhist approaches to the climate crisis. In 2009, John Stanley, David Loy and Gyurme Dorje edited a compilation work entitled A Buddhist Response to the Climate Emergency which covers most of the major Buddhist denominations and includes writings by leading global Buddhist leaders, clergy and thinkers.

Climate change is considered to be a very serious threat to the planet by Buddhist leaders across the planet. Buddhists have traditionally not been organised at the multilateral level to do advocacy on climate justice, however INEB is exploring how to coordinate this process. INEB will host a global Buddhist conference, in dialogue with other faith traditions and scientists, to be held in Kandy and Colombo, Sri Lanka in 25-27 September 2012.

Occupy the Climate Emergency: Buddhist Reflections on Inter-generational Justice: John Stanley, David Loy

You live inside us, beings of the future. In the spiral ribbons of our cells, you are here... You who come after, help us remember: we are your ancestors. Fill us with gladness for the work that must be done.

— Joanna Macy, World as Lover, World as Self

Keeping up with the world's soaring carbon emissions is not for the faint of heart. In 2010, they reached a new high of 33.5 billion tons. This was 6 percent more than in 2009, the highest ever year-on-year — despite a worldwide decline in economic growth.

China's yearly contribution increased by 9.3 percent, and now makes up over 24 percent of total global emissions. America, the former world heavyweight champion of carbon pollution, is still generating 16 percent of the total. India's emissions have jumped 9.4 percent to over two billion tons, placing it third in this game of existential "chicken."

None of these leading emitters has agreed to sign an international treaty that would obligate them to cut emissions. It's uncannily reminiscent of Professor Lovelock's prediction, from The Revenge of Gaia (2006):

We will do our best to survive, but sadly I cannot see the United States or the emerging economies of China and India cutting back in time, and they are the main source of emissions. The worst will happen and the survivors will have to adapt to a hell of a climate.

So is the worst indeed going to happen?

Denial, Disempowerment & Depression

Some of the answers can be found at the intersection of psychology, culture and politics. According to the Center for Disease Control, antidepressant use in the U.S. has increased 400 percent over the last 20 years. Antidepressants are now the commonest type of medication taken by Americans from their late teens to mid-forties.

Clinical psychologist Bruce Levine points out that people have been taught (through advertising) to understand demoralization or despair as a medical condition that requires a pharmacological cure. They "consume" medical treatment rather than ask pointed questions about the goals and values of their society. What if feeling demoralized is an appropriate response to deteriorating — indeed, self-destructive — economic and social institutions?

Levine suggests that depressive symptoms like helplessness, hopelessness and immobilization might often be better adressed through political engagement and activism that challenges unjust and exploitative social arrangements. For example, about one trillion dollars of student-loan debt now rests on the shoulders of young Americans. When we understand what's actually happening, we also see that it's more an issue of inter-generational justice than a reason for young people to take antidepressants.

Showing up for your life

People participating in the Occupy movement against corporate power speak of the invigorating effects of taking action together, and how much they enjoy being involved in non-hierarchical, truly democratic discussions. Genuine human communication is more satisfying than consumerism and its corollary, climate change denial.

Happily, Occupy continues to spread because it is more liberating — and more fun — than the media circus and electronic cabaret that usually divert us from looking deeper at hopelessness. It asks taboo political questions that expose the nature of the corporatocracy. It creates memes and messages that ring with relevance. As one sign put it: "Lost a job and found an occupation." To occupy something is the opposite of denial. We are the 99 percent and we are showing up for our life now!

Crunch time

Environmental scientist Lester Brown points out that humanity is in a race between tipping points. There is the social tipping point for taking urgent action to halt further global change. There is also the climate tipping point, beyond which global warming becomes self-sustaining (or "runaway") and human intervention becomes irrelevant.

This will not be a long race. The head of one large establishment institution, the International Energy Authority (IEA), has just announced that fossil fuel plants being built now will produce carbon emissions for decades, creating a "lock-in" effect leading to irreversible climate change. If we do not change this system within five years, the results will be disastrous.

The governments of the largest carbon polluter nations express no enthusiasm about signing a binding treaty at the current U.N. COP-17 climate talks in Durban, South Africa. Their excuse is the difficulty of squaring the historic carbon debt of the overdeveloped world with the need for developing countries to accept universal emissions reductions now. We are told we may need to wait until 2020 — a date that is clearly too late for a safe-climate future.

So, have we reached the social tipping point? The Occupy movement did not arise in a vacuum. Like the "Arab Spring", it is led by young people who have lost what sociologist Anthony Giddens calls "ontological security" — the mental stability that depends on a sense of continuity of the world and the future. Today Buddhism and all other religions must either demonstrate their relevance to this issue, or be consigned to history. Speaking about the "awesome responsibility of this political moment," author and activist Naomi Klein points out that the solutions to the economic and ecological crises are one and the same — because they have a single cause, the mentality of corporate capitalism. We have to determine together what we want to build in the rubble of the present collapsing system.

Here are a few things we already know. Fossil fuels are responsible for 80 percent of global warming. Large fossil fuel corporations are so wealthy they dictate policy to governments. Amazingly, the world still pays them $409 billion a year in subsidies (according to the IEA), to extract the last oil, coal and gas. A recent joint statement by 11 national engineering institutes tells us we have all the clean technology needed to cut emissions 85 percent by 2050. What is required is that governments free themselves from the grip of big carbon companies and mandate this transformation. That will also solve another big problem: the only way to create millions of new jobs now is to build the new green economy.

Something of great moral significance is needed to complete this narrative. Since our time on this wondrous planet is brief, we must consider our responsibility to all those who will come after us, whose well-being will depend on the decisions we make today. Shall we sacrifice our children, their children and the next 50 generations for a zero-empathy corporate state? Or shall we "occupy" this climate emergency instead of denying it — until the urgent truth of our situation is acted upon?

A Great Aridness: Climate Change and the Future of the American Southwest: Bill deBuys

We deeply encourage you to read Bill deBuys's extroardinary book

With its soaring azure sky and stark landscapes, the American Southwest is one of the most hauntingly beautiful regions on earth. Yet staggering population growth, combined with the intensifying effects of climate change, is driving the oasis-based society close to the brink of a Dust-Bowl-scale catastrophe. In A Great Aridness, William deBuys paints a compelling picture of what the Southwest might look like when the heat turns up and the water runs out.

This semi-arid land, vulnerable to water shortages, rising temperatures, wildfires, and a host of other environmental challenges, is poised to bear the heaviest consequences of global environmental change in the United States. Examining interrelated factors such as vanishing wildlife, forest die backs, and the over-allocation of the already stressed Colorado River — upon which nearly 30 million people depend — the author narrates the landscape's history — and future. He tells the inspiring stories of the climatologists and others who are helping untangle the complex, interlocking causes and effects of global warming.

And while the fate of this region may seem at first blush to be of merely local interest, what happens in the Southwest, deBuys suggests, will provide a glimpse of what other mid-latitude arid lands worldwide — the Mediterranean Basin, southern Africa, and the Middle East — will experience in the coming years.

Written with an elegance that recalls the prose of John McPhee and Wallace Stegner, A Great Aridness offers an unflinching look at the dramatic effects of climate change occurring right now in our own backyard.

Ecology, Ethics, Interdependence: Mind and Life with the Dalai Lama, Karmapa

In October of this year, the Mind and Life Institute supported an extraordinary set of dialogues in Dharamsala between His Holiness the Dalai Lama, the Karmapa, and leading environmental scientists, philosophers, ethicists, social activists, and contemplatives. Roshi Joan moderated three of those sessions.

The slow meltdown of Earth’s capacity to sustain much of life, as we know it, poses an urgent challenge for both spiritual traditions and science. These two ways of knowing have developed distinctive responses, which are potentially synergistic. The goal of the meeting was to provide an opportunity to articulate an engaged environmental ethics. This included the understanding of interdependence through an examination of the most recent data on the scientific case for effective ecological action.

Furthermore, it was a unique opportunity to meet with other faith traditions that have arrived at a religious basis for motivating environmental activism. A dialogue between contemplative scholars, activists and ecological scientists can enrich the response to our planetary crisis. Insights from the new thrust in ecological science evoke the deep interconnections between individual choice and planetary consequence as well as through cross-fertilization of ideas and meaningful action among activists working within their own spiritual framework.

The conference explored many dimensions, from the human-caused deterioration in the global systems that sustain life, and the role each of us plays as seen through the lens of industrial ecology, to a view from Buddhist philosophy and other faith traditions, to the on-the-ground realities faced by ecological activists. This conference will be a significant catalyst for the formulation of new research ideas in these fields and solutions to our planetary crisis.

Thich Nhat Hanh and David Suzuki in Conversation about the Health of the Planet

August 26, 2011

David Suzuki, Zen Buddhist Monk Thich Nhat Hanh, Vancouver Mayor Gregor Robertson, and David Suzuki Foundation Chair Jim Hoggan were in conversation about mindfulness, climate change and how to bring about the collective public awakening needed to restore health to the planet.

Zen Brain: Emotions, Equanimity, and the Embodied Mind

January 12 — 15: ZEN BRAIN 2012: Dr. Al Kaszniak and Roshi Joan have created a powerful series of programs over the years on the study of the mind and brain. This January's program brings our key faculty together: neuroscientists Richard Davidson, Al Kaszniak and Rebecca Todd, Buddhist scholar John Dunne, philosopher Evan Thompson, and renowned endocrinologist George Chrousos with Roshi, in a rare exploration of "the embodied mind" and how emotions work.

The program is about two laboratories, the subjective one of our own attentional observation, and the objective one of science and technology. For more information about this program and to register, please visit: ZEN BRAIN 2012. Note that registration is limited, so please register now.

In recent years, philosophy, psychology, and neuroscience have contributed new observations and insights into the brain and bodily processes involved in those states we call emotions and their relationships to our perceptions and actions. These observations support the conclusion that bodily changes and the experience of the body are inextricable aspects of emotions, and of most other aspects of mind. These disciplines have also provided frameworks for understanding how emotions are initiated and regulated in the mind/brain/body that are resonant with Buddhist perspectives and practices.

Well known scientists and scholars will explore emotions, equanimity, and the embodied mind from the perspectives of Buddhist theory and practice, neuroscience/neuroendocrinology, psychology, and philosophy of mind. Special consideration will be given to recent studies of emotion response and regulation in meditation practitioners. Talks, discussions, and explorations with participants are embedded within zazen practice throughout each day.

16 CEUs for counselors, therapists and social workers are available for this retreat through the New Mexico Counseling and Therapy Practice Board.

Please note that this is the only time Upaya will be offering the Zen Brain program in 2012. Registration limited.

For more information about this retreat and to register, please visit: ZEN BRAIN 2012.

Awakening to Buddha Nature: John Dunne

The continuity between ordinary consciousness and the fully awake state of Buddhahood is called Tathagatagarbha or "Buddha Nature." What is this "Buddha Nature", and how can it be actualized in one's everyday experience? Asking these and other questions, and using various modes of inquiry to do so, the renowned Buddhist scholar, Dr. John Dunne explores what is essential to the realization of Buddha Nature. John Dunne will be offering a program on “Awakening to Buddha Nature,” January 18-22, at Upaya. For more information, please click here.

We will consider what is already known about this Buddha principle in various traditions, the ways we know, as well as the emotional framework of that knowledge. During the retreat John Dunne will teach Buddhist Philosophy and the Dharma in his brilliant and humorous way, which makes it easily accessible for western practitioners. This retreat is appropriate for beginners and long-time practitioners. Sensei Beate will lead morning and evening meditation and will give meditation instructions.

Roshi Joan says: "Dr. John Dunne is a remarkable scholar and teacher of Buddhism, an inspiring presence, a philosopher, and rare heart and mind. We are honored that he will teach at Upaya January 18-22."

Introduction to the Buddha and His Teachings: Ray Olson

Ray Olson, ordained Buddhist priest and Dharma Holder at Upaya, is offering an Introduction to The Buddha and his Teachings for six consecutive Monday evenings, January 23 - February 27, from 7 - 8:30 pm at Upaya House. Each week, Ray will distribute a written handout.

The course requires a minimum of six enrollees, so please sign up early!

There is no charge for the course, but dana will be gratefully accepted and applied to the Prison Outreach Project.

To reserve a place, please email Beverly Croydon at upaya@upaya.org, or call her at 986-8518, X 11 between 1 and 5 pm weekdays.

Ways to be at Upaya: Path of Service, Guest Practitioner, Volunteer

There are many ways to deepen your practice and spend time at Upaya. One way is the Path of Serviceprogram. Upaya is accepting applications for our Path of Service resident program, inviting practitioners to live and serve here from three months to a year or more. For more information and to apply click here or contact: pos@upaya.org

Please visit this web page on our site to learn more about other options for staying at Upaya, including personal retreats, work exchange, and more.

Green Tara Print — Inspired Holiday Gift

For December Only!

Limited quantities of the beautiful Green Tara giclée print created by renowned artist, Mayumi Oda are being offered at a reduced price, only $199 each (originally $300), plus shipping. This is a smaller version of the large one that hangs in Upaya's Zendo.

The prints are signed by both Mayumi and Roshi Joan, and the proceeds from this sale will benefit the Prajna Mountain Forest Refuge, so the majority of your purchase will be tax deductible.

First come first served!

To order, call Beverly Croydon at 505-986-8518 X11 or email her at upaya@upaya.org

Upaya Sitting Groups in the U.S. and Canada

If you appreciate Roshi Joan's teachings and the flavor of engaged practice at Upaya, you can find some of our sister sanghas around the continent: